Pages

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Strengtheory.com: How to Prevent Muscle Strains

I'm a big fan of killing two birds with one stone.Well, let me qualify that. I mean, I don't really love to kill birds. But when it only takes ONE stone to kill TWO, that just kind of gets me going.Anyway, last semester, I did just that. I was tasked with writing a literature review of an injury for my athletic training class.Rather than rehash ACL's or some other boring injury like everyone else, I took it as an opportunity to write about something a lot of people actually care about and could benefit from learning more about.The topic I chose was muscle strain injuries. Anecdotally, just about everyone has suffered one, however serious. In fact, just this fall, I had one myself of my pec. It wasn't anything serious, like the guy below's, but still, it lingered annoyingly for months.

Powerlifter Scot Mendelson sporting a complete pec tear

How did I injure my pec? According to the research, just like every other idiot male age 20-40: bench pressing (without warming up).After submitting the paper to my professor, I decided to refine and send it over to my friend Greg Nuckols, who was gracious enough to host it on Strengtheory.In this version, my goal was to delve deeply into the science of muscle strains -- both the mechanism (cause) and the prevention -- but in simple enough terms for anyone to understand.Without further ado, here is the link:http://www.strengtheory.com/how-to-prevent-muscle-strains/If you've ever had a strain or wish to prevent them in the future, be sure to give this a read!